Atelier Lemaire Restauration et Conservation de Meubles Anciens

FURNITURE RESTORATION

“If you want to preserve the past, then you’ve got to really take care of it”. This is what fine furniture restorers believe in, and what they do.

Our guiding principle is not just to give furniture a beautiful finish, but to get to the root cause of the visible deterioration. This can even mean taking the item apart in order to get to the heart of the problem.

We strive to work ethically to restore and preserve fine furniture and respect the integrity and history of each piece. All of our interventions are reversible.

Most of our work focuses on restoring items of furniture in a way that respects their history, their era, their style, their condition and the desires of our clients. In this way we can preserve them while maintaining their original spirit.

We restore all types of furniture (from writing desks to full desks, from chests of drawers to cabinets, from any period) in any style.

Over the past few years, the Atelier has grown and developed. We now also specialise in furniture marking (by installing microchips and marking with combinations of different crystals) and secure hanging systems for frames and paintings.

SECURE HANGING SYSTEMS

We come to your home to securely hang and mount your paintings and furniture using a highly specialised secure hanging system.

PROPERTY MARKING

Over the past few years, we’ve branched out into another, complementary line of work: property marking. This is because, due to lack of evidence, only 2 to 5% of the 7000 items stolen every year are returned to their rightful owners (source: Assemblée Nationale, report N° 3533, Pierre Lequiller).

The two main causes for this are a lack of information (a detailed description of the item) and the absence of any certification of ownership. In this context, markings on valuable property such as furniture and paintings offer genuine protection to your goods, and facilitate their return if stolen.

We work with a team of scientists and academics who have perfected a form of long-lasting identification which can be paired with proof of ownership.

This property marking offers several different benefits:

• it is impossible to forge

• it is not altered or damaged over time

• it is unique, ensuring that it can be returned to its rightful owner

• it can be visible, to dissuade thieves

• or invisible for discreet security

To achieve this, the marking system includes:

• a visible, coded label (optional)

• invisible ink, which can be read using specialist equipment

• a mixture of crystals with unique physical-chemical properties embedded into the material